The Field Ploughed
by Silverr
Summary: There are things worse than wicked stepmothers. ** Written for glass icarus in the Yuletide 2007 challenge.


_This story is copyright © 2007 under author's real name. All rights reserved._

_Yuletide 2007 fic written for glass_icarus._

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**The Field Ploughed**

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_**Once upon a time a woman and her husband lived in a small village. These two were well liked, hard-working and kind, but hid a secret sorrow; though married for many years they had no children. When finally they were blessed with a daughter they wanted to call her Joy, but, afraid of the bad luck that might befall her if such a name was spoken aloud, named her Nettle instead.**_

Almost a score of years went by unremarked until the drought began: month after month of clouds that buried the sun and brought nothing but a hot, persistent dusk. Haggard travelers passing through the village brought news of widespread famine and despair. Everywhere, fields had shriveled to pale husks; everywhere, granaries and cellars were empty; everywhere, those too weak to forage in the forests were scythed by plague and starvation – or by those turned monstrous from hunger.

A messenger rode into the almost empty village one day. "Any child orphaned by misfortune is to go to the castle, to nestle under the King's benevolent wing." If Nettle had not been so sorrowful, she might have wondered why the messenger showed no surprise at the sight of children burying their parents, or asked why the King had not send help earlier – but then she had been taught to respect elders. 

_**After her parent's death Nettle went to work as a servant in the castle. **_

A solemn woman in plain gray robes greeted her. "This is your new home. By the King's mercy you will be clothed and fed and sheltered: in return you will do as you are told, speak when spoken to, and attend the daily Greeting of the Sun in the greensward. " As she gathered up her mantle and made to leave she added, "Do not wander from your work in the kitchen during the day, and stay indoors at night. Keep to these rules and you will be safe." 

_**The first night Nettle slept in the castle she dreamed that a bird flew through her window and warned her to hold her breath at sunrise.**_

The next morning, Nettle and the other orphans shuffled in the dark from their beds into a cold blue predawn, clammy and oppressive. Nettle thought she heard one of the smaller boys sniffling, but before she could find him the Prayer began, accompanying the light that began to spill over the top of the mountain. As the light burned the fog away in golden swirls of mist, Nettle, remembering what the bird had told her, held her breath as long as she could. Once the air was clear and full of morning light Nettle stooped to comfort the boy.

"Don't be sad," she said gently.

"I'm not sad," the boy responded, "What would I be sad about?" His face, dreamy and cheerful in the morning light, was latticed with drying tears.

In the kitchen, Cook and the steward supervised the morning tasks, impatiently directing the new servants. Once the fire was crackling and the pots bubbling, however, the pace slowed a little.

"So were you married?" Nettle asked a young woman who had come to the castle from the north.

"I don't know," came the surprising answer.

"He must not have been very good in the saddle, if she can't remember him," Cook said with a snort, and all the women in the kitchen laughed.

Nettle, scrubbing the floor, said nothing. 

_**One day Nettle was sent to draw water from the well in the courtyard. As she passed the barn she heard strange sounds; but even though she was curious she remembered what she had been told and hurried past.**_

The next morning, she woke to find a tuft of fur on her pillow, stiff with dried blood. She did not forget to hold her breath against the dawn light. 

_**The second time Nettle was sent to fetch water, she heard the sounds again, and again she hurried past the barn.**_

As she came through the door into the kitchen the woman in gray was just leaving. "Who is that lady?" Nettle asked Cook.

Everyone in the kitchen stopped talking and looked at Nettle, puzzled: all except Cook, who continued stirring. Nettle thought that perhaps no one had heard her, but the next time she and Cook were alone in the kitchen, Cook glared at her and muttered, "Asking questions causes pain." As Nettle made to apologize Cook whispered fiercely, "That lady is the queen. Lost six sons and her daughter not so long ago, so grieving, she is. Without comfort, she is. Not to be bothered."

"Surely the King comforts her?"

"Aye, the King must be grieving too."

The next morning another tuft of fur was on Nettle's pillow – along with a feather. 

_**The third time that Nettle was sent to the well, her curiosity overcame her, and she entered the barn, where she found strange beasts, cruelly treated.**_

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness; when they did, the animals melted from the surrounding darkness. Huge, misshapen, neither cattle nor boar nor lion but a hideous mixture of all three, they were chained to the walls, without food or water. A few lay on the straw, twitching with exhaustion; one staggered to its feet then slammed itself against its stall; and the one closest to Nettle looked at her with bottomless eyes as it gave a strangled roar and slashed at itself with its tusks. All around it, the stable floor was blanketed with tufts of bloody fur like those she had found on her pillow. 

_**Nettle's kind heart was moved at the animals' treatment.**_

From that day on, whenever Nettle was sent for water she always carried a bucket of rainwater into the barn on her way to the well. She also slipped midden scraps into her pockets; at first she hurriedly tossed them on the straw at the animals' feet, but after a few days she overcame her fear and held out the food in cupped hands. Wary at first, after a time they seemed to learn to trust her – and she them, for despite their size and fearsome appearance they always ate the food so delicately that their teeth never touched her skin.

Nettle began to wonder how it was that the beasts seemed so exhausted, as they were always in the barn no matter what time of day she came. "Who is working you? And when?" she asked the beast with the bottomless eyes, stroking the rough fur of its neck. In answer the beast only growled, and stamped its cloven feet.

That night Nettle slipped from her cot and sat in the shadows of the kitchen, watching from the window. The moon had already set, and in that deepest hour of the night before the dawn the castle gates swung wide and Nettle saw the beasts enter the courtyard, followed by a shrouded figure who whipped them into the barn.

The next night Nettle hid outside the castle walls until after sunset. Just before moonrise the gates opened and the chained beasts shambled out. Nettle followed them across a river and through a cave to a hidden valley, to where the shrouded figure harnessed the beasts to a gigantic plow and then lashed them until they began to pull.

Behind the plow the earth heaved and roiled. At first there was only faint glow in the tilled furrow, then thick stems, flailing and obscene, begin to push up into the night. The terrified beasts strained against their harness, driven by fear to pull the plow ever-faster. Behind them the eerie harvest grew, taller than a man: and when the writhing field was fully furrowed it bloomed, white buds that burst into flowers of mist. At that moment it seemed to Nettle that the beasts turned into men, trembling and beaten: but then the illusion vanished, and the relentless ploughman drove them back to the castle. 

_**Nettle knew then that the field and the beasts were bewitched, and swore to break the spell.**_

The next morning she said to the beast with the bottomless eyes, "I will find a way to free you." The beast snorted and shook its head as if to dissuade her, but Nettle was determined.

All that day as she swept floors and scrubbed pans and carried water her mind went over and over it. Finally she asked Cook, "What do you know about magic?"

"People say that magic can hide or reveal, punish or reward." Cook looked at her sternly. "But I have no dealings with magic, and neither should you."

"And those people who know of magic – how do they say a spell can be broken?"

"Enough nonsense!" Cook wiped her hands on her apron. "Why take up the burden of what you cannot change?" 

_**That night Nettle prayed for knowledge. In her dream an angel in the form of a young girl came to her and said, "Seven cloaks must you hide in the wood: stitch them of leathers and flowers and blood. If truly you wish the spell to be broken, from sunrise to sunset no word must be spoken." **_

From then on Nettle did not speak. Each month at the dark of the moon she followed the beasts to the bewitched field and plucked a single white flower, then used every free moment to carefully weave a cloak around the unholy bloom, using the bloody scraps of fur that she gathered from the barn and the feathers that she found each morning on her pillow. Her sudden muteness went unremarked at first, for no one expects conversation with a scullery maid. However, finally the other servants noticed that Nettle now only smiled or nodded or shook her head. They asked her what was wrong, and then tried to prod or trick her into speaking, and finally became angry. As she would not speak to defend herself, Nettle was soon denounced as a witch – or at the very least possessed – and sentenced to be burned. 

_**The stake was set – the firewood was piled high – and then with a crash the beasts broke out of the barn, stampeding the flames as a bird flew over the crowd, clutching the cloaks that Nettle had made; six it dropped on the herd, and the six missing princes were revealed. **_

With a cry the Gray Lady ran from the castle, sobbing with happiness and embracing her sons.

"Sister!" cried the eldest prince – he who had been the beast with bottomless eyes – and stretched out his hand to the bird.

The bird landed on Nettle's shoulder, clutching the seventh cloak. "Thank you," it said.

"But you are not restored, as your brothers have been."

"My body lies in the plowed field, sister," the bird said. "Misused and then slain by my unnatural father, who when challenged by my brothers cursed them to nightly re-bury my bones. In this form my spirit has freedom." 

_**When the King emerged from the castle the bird soared high above and dropped the seventh cloak on him; when he was revealed as a hideous monster the people fell upon him and burned him in Nettle's place.**_

The next morning when the sun came up, there was no golden mist to numb the pain of the previous day, but there was the rumble of distant thunder. 

_**Nettle and the eldest Prince were wed and reigned for many years. They named their first daughter Joy.**_

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Author's note:

The request, in the Fairy Tales – Traditional fandom, was for Beauty and the Beast/The Twelve Dancing Princesses/The Seven Swans/The Snow Queen. ~ As I wasn't sure if I should pick only one, I wanted to try to blend elements from all four. ~ I was stumped until, while researching The Dancing Princesses, I came across the gender-inverted Scottish version called "Kate Crackernuts" which sparked the idea to invert a number of the traditional details: for example, the Snow Queen's shards of Devil's mirror that make the world seem nasty and depressing here become the mist at morning that makes those who breathe it forget the horrors of the night. ~ It was also pointed out in early reviews that this tale (inadvertently) incorporates aspects of The Juniper Tree, in which a stepmother kills her stepson and feeds him to his father in a stew, after which the stepsister saves the bones and buries them under a tree. (Yes, after a lengthy process the evil stepmother is punished.) ~ I also believe that there is also an echo from Alice Sebold's _The Lovely Bones_.

posted 24 Dec 2007  
(04) 8 Mar 2010


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